


Western Expansion

by Anonymississippi



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Summer Society, Zeta Omega Mu, Zeta Society - Freeform, but really wish I did, post-second semester AU, the end of the Zeta Society novel I don't have time to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 00:32:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3431354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Summer Society teams up with the Zetas to fight the resurrected Laphilformes during the Silas spring semester. During that time, Danny, commander of the forest-dwelling Summer Sockers, and Kirsch, newly appointed Centurion of the water-loving, lake-house Zetas, grow closer. So close they might want a little more from each other. Too bad a stupid Silas prophecy stands in their way. </p>
<p>But... it's Danny and Kirsch. When have they ever backed down from a fight?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Western Expansion

The Western Expansion

Why does twilight always make the sky look like it’s on fire? Like, what is it about the composition of the atmosphere that cuts lines of purple and marmalade over a half-circle of burning gas? Why is the earth so damn mysterious? Why can’t anyone ever reach the horizon? Like, it’s there, some kind of, uhm, manifest destiny or something, so what the hell makes it seem so… unattainable?

“Brody.”

Kirsch abandoned the skyline, cast his gaze earthbound toward the Summer Psycho lumbering towards him. She sported tattered wears and a hitched gait, an expression somewhere on the spectrum of resigned fatigue and ponderous consternation. Kirsch just thought she looked sad. The bow slung across her shoulders thumped her back as she stepped, the weapon a reassuring texture of strap and sting. Sort of how he felt with his trident in hand. The familiar handle had rubbed calluses into his palms over the first month of freshman year, had even influenced how he held his pencils when he took notes (if he took notes). The trident changed the geography of his hands… added mountains overtop hairy knuckles and blisters along lifelines.

The trident changed a lot of things.

“Hey, Blue. How’s your ribs?”

“Two cracked, sore as a motherfucker. How’s your jaw?”

“Neo-classical, according to Carmsexy.”

“What the—”

“Pssha, forget it,” Kirsch rubbed the side of his face with the inflated bruise, a burgeoning, grotesque knob of burst capillaries and rattled skull. Damned quarterstaffs and their long reaches. He flopped his feet in the water, splashing the lake foam onto his shorts. The trident in his lap shimmered and thrummed when the water hit it, recharging from Silas’s ancient powersource.

“What’s the final… how many did we—”

“Seven,” Danny responded.

She was knicked up like the victim of some brutal shivved torture session, superficial cuts crisscrossing the skin on her forearms, shredding the material on her shirt. Blood and dirt spackled her skin to the point that he couldn’t tell the difference between dust and freckle. He propped his elbows on his knees and put his head in his hands.

“Four brothers, three sisters. No… no civilians,” Danny continued.

“I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Kirsch…”

He felt her hand on his bare back. His skin felt cool, slimy, still wet from the battle. Hers was hotter than a furnace, probably sweaty, cuts and scratches no doubt stinging. He could feel silt and algae between his toes and it was so familiar, so damn comforting to have the water below him and Danny beside him that the wave of nausea passed, but the disgust lingered.

“It’s our job. We did our jobs, Kirsch.”

“How do you… how do you cope, Blue?”

“Did you try your best? As Centurion, did you do your damndest to fight the battle and get your people home?”

“What does that have to do with—”

“Brody, look at me,” Danny instructed softly.

Her voice sounded like the lake, like the water. Consistent. Reassuring. But the fire smoldered in her undertones (the mysterious bit of Danny Lawrence that confounded him), that half of her he would never understand. The part of her connected to her sisters, to her bow, to the forest. The part of him that she would never understand, connected to his brothers, to his trident, to the water.

 

* * *

 

 

_By land and sea the armies fight / the twain shall kill offending light / Silas stands and lives despite / attacks by day, and raids by night._

_The chosen two and their brigade / will lead the charge as they invade / but fail or win the two will fade / forbidden love, a lost crusade._

 

* * *

 

 

“I did _my_ best,” Danny murmured.

_God, when did her eyes get so blue_?

“I know I did my best, to fight my fight, to bring my sisters and my friends home. I did my best to keep your brethren living, I’d never send them in as canon fodder. But Joseph and Ollie _volunteered_ , Kirsch, so that’s not on you. LaF brews the paralysis drugs, Laura investigates the legendary origins. Perry moms and Carmilla, well, she doesn’t exactly _help_ but… she’s there. And us? We fight, Kirsch. Zetas and Summer Socs fight. Me and you lead and that’s been destined from day one, okay?”

Kirsch swallowed, propped his chin on fisted hands and stared out over the water. The lake lamented with him.

“Yeah, I… I guess I get that. It’s just I… I didn’t know it would hit this hard. I mean Blue, I… I _knew_ , but it makes me wonder about ends and means. And if the fight’s not… hell, I’m letting people go to _war_ , Danny. Why do I have to…”

“Kirsch?”

“Why do I have to give up the best thing that ever happened to me because of some old rule?”

He felt Danny’s fingernails in the skin of his shoulder blade. He wanted to get back in the water. Recharge. Himself, his trident. Swim in the occasional wave and wash himself of the guilt. Too bad the foam was still tinted pink and crimson, blood blended into lake foam burbling around the posts of the dock. His men… his brothers were down there. And his… well, whatever she was, whatever they _couldn’t be..._ shewas just out of reach.

“Kirsch, we… we talked about this. We agreed, we weren’t going to… jump into this. We’ve got responsibilities. We have to prepare for the next attack. There’s more we have to—”

“I’m going after them this summer,” Kirsch said.

He hadn’t made the decision until the words left his mouth, until he recalled the weight of Ollie’s limp arm, thrown over his shoulder during a failed rescue. He had staggered to pull his lieutenant’s body onto the beach, heedless of the blood spurts staining the pebbly shore. Perry had dropped to her knees, all business, despite the squeamish jitter he caught haunting her vision. Kirsch had felt the sucking slush of the tide at his ankles and he’d had to dive back in, trident in hand, because the fish was still in the lake and the Summer Psycho ( _DannyDannyDannyDannyspendingmylifewithyouwecan’tdothispleaseIthinkIloveyouDanny_ ) and her squadron of Sagittarii were positioned in the underground cave, taking shots and throwing grenades and loosing catapults while his brothers attacked from below: with tridents and harpoons and nets to immobilize the beast, darted tranquilizer guns courtesy of LaF and her burgeoning friendship with the geeks in the Alchemy Club.

The only time the Summer Society and the Zetas could come together was in battle, as mandated by Silas decree, some pact sealed in blood, with spine-shattering affects that could ripple across the waves of the world if ever violated… yada yada yada.

Kirsch had never much cared for history.

Not when the present looked so fucking gorgeous and badass.

“Come with me,” Kirsch said, setting his trident aside. Weapons couldn’t help him now. He just had to man… girl… he just had to buck up enough to do it, to ask her, to tell her. “I can’t… you helped me. We… we’re better together. You make me better. And that’s probably really selfish, but I… I know I can’t find the nests on my own. Just cause we filleted Papa fish doesn’t mean the babies aren’t ready to hatch and… it’d just be easier with you there. It’s better. _Everything_ is better with you, Danny.”

“Kirsch… we… I…”

“Danny, please,” Kirsch mumbled, and he felt really stupid for asking, especially after all the stuff she’d done for him this semester. It started off rough, irritating as rug burn, those Summer Psychos back to their campus defense stuff, writing the Zetas off as meatheads. They weren’t all geniuses but he and his brothers damn sure weren’t idiots… they could _help_. They knew how to follow orders. And it was Danny who’d proposed some kind of truce to the bickering in light of the submerged shark-demon that had migrated to the Silas lake, the backyard of the Zeta house. The lake sat on the fringe of the woods (the ancestral backyard of the Summer Sockers).

It was Danny who’d saved Kirsch’s ass last semester. Danny who had spent late nights and early mornings training and sparring with his guys, on water, on land, prepping and researching and all the while maintaining a perfect academic average which blew Kirsch out of the proverbial (and at times, literal) water. He’d row some nights and just sit in the Zeta dingy, cursing himself for falling for her.

Until she’d reciprocated, beneath a pine tree just before their mission to search the underwater caves. He’d said something stupid and she’d swung wide, playfully, avoided his own nudge, backed him up to a tree trunk and pinned him there, blue eyes bright, a smile so sharp it could slice a pineapple.

(“Blue… uh, Danny.”

“Yeah?”

She was breathing hard. Her hair was in this funny braid thing. She’d called it a fish tail. Kirsch had laughed because back then, it seemed like some sort of sign.

“I want to… uhm… can I hug you?”

“If you think you can pull that reverse tackle on me—”

“I want to kiss you and I want to make sure you won’t punch me if I try.”

…

…

…

“You want to kiss me?”

Kirsch remembered nodding, his palms sweating from their scramble. He still stood taller by a meager inch, so he set his sight on her forehead, wrinkled in confusion, because looking at her would just embarrass the crap out of him, because he’d just given her ammunition to give him hell from here to eternity if she didn’t—

"So..."

"So...?"

“Why’d you ask?” Danny's brow shifted toward her wrinkled forehead.

“’Cause I’m a little afraid of you,” he answered, not quite managing a full grin. “Because you’re pretty and really smart and I like fighting with you. And I like… I just like you. And I don’t want to do anything to piss you off, ‘cause if you don’t like me, that’s... uhm, cool.”

He could feel her grip loosen; the wrinkles in her forehead began to flatten out.

“We just fight really good together," he kept talking, because Danny Lawrence rarely  _didn't_ have something to say. "I mean, you can’t really boil water and you give my brothers a hard time, but you’re a good Commander and I just, I dunno. I like you.”

Danny released his wrists and tilted her chin upward, and if he hadn’t been spending so much time around her lately he might’ve mistaken the action for defiance. When he stopped looking at her forehead, he saw a matching half-grin on her face.

“Yeah, Kirsch, you can kiss me.”

So he did.

Bonus:

She kissed him back.)

“I want you to come with me to kill the nests before they hatch.”

“Just because they’re supposed to hatch when school starts next year—”

“Weren’t you listening to Laura the other day?” Kirsch asked her, trying to wrap his head around the timeline. Strategy was more his thing, but he’d gotten the jist of what Laura and sexy vamp were trying to say. “They’re all gonna come swimming back here come the start of fall semester. But if we can head ‘em off, we don’t have to worry about it. We can get back to parties, and intramurals. Hell, I’m gonna have to freakin’ study next year. I’ve gotta get my shit together if I want to graduate on time.”

Danny shook her head, bypassing his self-deprecation.

“We don’t know where they are. There’s no way we could—”

“So let’s take a crew with us. Laura, and LaF, and Perry if you’re worried about everybody getting hurt. Carmilla would come along, and I can bring Jamie.”

“The rock guy?”

“He’s a geology major. Knows a lot about underwater habitats where the eggs might be.”

“This is sounding like one hell of a summer vacation.”

“Well, it’s something to think about, anyway.”

“And us?” Danny asked noncommittally, watching the day’s light die over the water. “You think there’s any truth to that prophecy we found in the caves?”

That stupid scroll they’d found chronicled a history of fated Silas leaders, never to unite, and if they did, sure to die in battle. Like clockwork, once a century, two select souls from the Zetas and the Summer Society get to bear the burden of loving and dying, or living and… well, could he really call it living without her? He didn't quite know if he, well, love's some serious shit. But he liked to strategize with her. To look at her. To hang out with her. To listen to what she said. He didn't want prophecy saying they couldn't be together if that's what they decided in the future. So, love. Maybe. At some point. 

Just don't tell Danny Lawrence and Brody Kirsch _what to do_ , and everything should work itself out.

“I mean, I wish there wasn’t this burden of destiny hanging over us," he grunted. "But even I know, you don’t piss on ritual. On prophecy. That’s in the Zeta code,” Kirsch said.

“Summer Society bylaws as well,” Danny added.

“So…”

“So…”

They turned together on the dockside, lips meeting with acknowledged disregard of Fate and all it’s idiotic stipulations. Danny still tasted like battle, tangy because of the blood, the grime, the sweat. His cheek was still sensitive and he winced when she tilted. When he put his hand on her waist she shivered and retracted, her ribs protesting his touch.

Definitely not the best kiss.

But… it still meant a lot.

Danny was firm beneath his hands and she was here, she’d _survived_ , and she could help him save the world. They still had a shot at being heroes. Hell, he might even have a shot at getting the girl, destiny and blood pacts be damned. Danny Lawrence could throw a spear in Fate’s eye and he could skewer Fate on his trident and they’d walk off laughing, racing back to the caf so the loser had to spot lunch.

Because that’s all he really wanted.

To be good at something.

Just because school wasn’t for him didn’t mean he couldn’t do things right. Help people. Care about people. And if he got a little lucky, he might could get the girl in the process.

He’s a simple guy. That’s all he really wants.

And maybe the kissing. And the hugging. And damn… just… _Danny_.

“So,” Danny breathed against his lips, her fingers wriggling against his obliques.

“Yeah,” he said. “So.”

Danny smiled and turned her head down, chuckling into her shoulder. “God, we’re both just stubborn enough to try this, then?”

“Stubborn and stupid, I guess.”

“You’re not stupid, Kirsch,” Danny said.

And the way she said it, all authoritative and smug, laced with just the tiniest pinch of _care;_ well, Kirsch believed her.

He kinda always believed in Danny.

“I… thanks, Blue.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“So…”

“So…”

“Is that our code for ‘let’s go makeout on the docks’?" Danny asked. "‘Cause it’s uhm, nice and all, but I need to go get my ribs wrapped,” Danny tugged at the hem of her shirt.

“I’ll walk you back,” Kirsch said, heaving himself from his perch at the dock’s end. “Not that you need an escort, or anything. Just… 'cause I wanna walk you back.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

Kirsch gathered up his trident and slung it over his shoulder. He fell into step beside Danny and tried to keep his cool when she grabbed his free hand.

“So…” she said, lingering over the syllables. Kirsch was beginning to like that word. “I guess it’s south, then? To the sea?”

“I was thinking west. Follow the trajectory of the rivers, since we’re operating on inland lakes. Then hit the Atlantic. From there?” he led, giving her arm a little swing toward the ending day. “Who knows?”

“West.”

“Yeah," Kirsch smiled. Because he was alright. Danny was alright. Silas was alright. And he had big plans. "Sometimes, Danny, I get it in my head that I’m good enough to go on these awesome adventures. Do the impossible.”

“What’s your impossible?”

“Touch the horizon.”

“Why?”

“’Cause there’s nothing more beautiful than blue skies and red sunsets,” he said, threading their fingers together.

“Smooth.”

“I thought so,” he cocked his head upward a tick, waiting for a punch to the arm.

It never came. Perhaps she knew he was still injured.

“God, you’re insufferable.”

“Do what now?”

“Come on,” Danny grinned, tugging him closer. “Let’s go get you checked out and make sure you didn’t suffer a concussion. The remaining brain cells you have need to be preserved at all costs.”

“Danny,” he stopped, took note of a hand nearly as large as his. It was finer, less meaty, but so wondrously capable. So freaking strong. “I just…”

“No, Brody, I get it.”

“So…”

“So…”

“Come west with me?”

Danny Lawrence flicked the bottom of her bow string and nudged the handle of his trident. "Yeah. Let's go kick some ass."

**Author's Note:**

> So, I sat down to finish Push, my Lawstein AU, but this popped out instead. It's basically the final chapter of the (admittedly epic but terrifyingly long) Zeta Society novel-length fic I have rolling about in my mind palace. Maybe when the summer comes... and I have more canon ZS material to work with after season two... *crosses fingers, dares to hope* Would love some feedback if you cared to provide it. Forgive the typos, I churned it out in an afternoon.


End file.
